Cliven Bundy Cattle appear to be starving after overgrazing - Feds are not planning on going in.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/bundy-cattle-may-be-starving-after-overgrazing-clivens-management-practices-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired/

Cliven Bundy’s cattle have decimated the public lands they share with an endangered tortoise, and now both the cows and the turtles may be starving.

The Nevada rancher and some of his sons have been jailed for their roles in armed standoffs with federal authorities two years ago at the family’s Bunkerville ranch and earlier this year at an Oregon nature preserve.

A new report in the Reno Gazette-Journal shows Bundy’s stubborn refusal to follow rules, and his lackadaisical ranching practices, have endangered his cattle and the land they roam unattended.

The elder Bundy has been embroiled for two decades in a dispute with the Bureau of Land Management, which administers federally owned land where he’s grazed cattle for decades, and militia members and others came in April 2014 to threaten force to prevent authorities from rounding up his cattle.

The 69-year-old Bundy owes more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees and fines dating back to the early 1990s, when the BLM ordered him to reduce his herd from 500 to 150 on public lands near Gold Butte.

He refused and stopped paying mandated fees to use the land — and federal authorities say the herd may have doubled to more than 1,000 cows since then.

An online petition, which has gathered about 7,000 signatures so far, is asking federal and state governments to remove the animals before summer to prevent them from starving in the heat.

A senior scientist with the Humane Society of the United States told the Gazette-Journal that Bundy had given up his grazing rights in 1993, when he stopped paying fees, and had simply let his cows loose to reproduce and overgraze the dry and fragile ecosystem.

“(The cattle) are there 24/7, 365 days (a year),” said Rob Mrowka, a Humane Society scientist who posted the petition. “When the desert tortoises come out of their tunnels to forage in the spring, it’s been nibbled down.”

Ranchers typically rotate grazing areas to allow periods of rest for the land, but Bundy allowed his cattle to roam freely over the public lands — even before his arrest.